John Donovan's Power Animals: Bear is among the disturbing sculptures that depict the militancy of ancient warriors through the vocabulary of child's toys. Looking at the sculptures as a person of faith can also find a message of the absurdity of war and the essential humanity of the warriors sent off to kill each other. (Kay Campbell / kcampbell@al.com)

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – Before people wandering the Huntsville Museum of Art can find the priceless treasures of Medieval and Renaissance paintings and alabaster carvings, which are in the museum’s climate-controlled rooms, they are likely to be distracted by the profoundly quirky clay sculptures of John Donovan just off the first gallery.

All three exhibits, Encounters: John Donovan, Divine Masterpieces: Selections from Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery and Object of Devotion: Medieval English Alabaster Sculpture from the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, will remain at the museum through Sunday, Jan. 20, 2013. And all three, while appealing to those who view them merely as works of art, also can carry deeper messages for people who view them through the lens of faith.

It’s hard to look at Donovan’s deceptively cuddly warriors, assembled from remnants of both the stuff of military weapons and the stuff of children’s toys, without thinking of Isaiah’s prophecy God inspiring nations to beat swords into plowshares. The works re-imagine fierce killers as the winsome children they also are. Whether or not Donovan, who teaches at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, means the works as statements of the absurdity of war and the humanness of the warriors inside their armor, those are meanings the collection offers.

Art for prayer's sake

Bobby Harrison, who teaches art appreciation at Oakwood University, points out the meaning of the odd tiny man tucked at the corner of a Byzantine-style painting of Mary and Jesus (he was likely the donor that made the painting possible). The more realistic style of painting behind him demonstrates how artists during the Renaissance wanted to convey the humanity of the holy family. The paintings, created within the same half-century, show that artists had different intentions, not necessarily different skills, in the works they did. (Kay Campbell / kcampbell@al.com)

Speculating on the intentions of the sculptors and paintings, most anonymous, whose works are included in the museum’s other special exhibits, is less risky.

These works, painted and carved during the hinge years that join the Medieval and Renaissance styles of the late 14th and early 15th centuries, were conceived as calls to prayer.

An anonymous priest’s work, “Meditations on the Life of Christ,” written in the early 1300s, encouraged people of faith to contemplate depictions of Jesus and the saints as if the people themselves were eye witnesses to the lives of the holy ones. Such contemplation would help move their hearts toward spiritual purification.

So when people viewed a crucifix, with the body of Jesus draped in agony against the nails in his hands and feet, they were to imagine what he was experiencing and what those who had stood at the base of the cross felt.

“Meditations” was a hugely influential work that circulated widely in Europe during the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance. The book is credited with inspiring the wide development of devotional art. In addition to calling people to a deeper connection with God, the art also helped teach the stories of the Bible during the time when few people could read and write – and even if they could, the hand-written manuscripts were far too expensive for ordinary people to possess. Also, the church had periods of barring unfiltered access to the Bible by non-theologians and priests.

Art, in those days, then, was more of a sermon from the church to the church than the creative expression of individuals, said museum curator Peter Baldaia Friday as he walked through the exhibit with Bobby Harrison, professor of art appreciation at Oakwood University.

“These were made in workshops,” Baldaia said. “This is not art for the pure fun of it.”

A triptych showing the birth of Jesus, on the left, the visit by the Magi in the center, and then the windy flight to Egypt on the right, offers meditative onlookers a lot to contemplate. (Kay Campbell / kcampbell@al.com)

Walking into Heaven

Those congregations of artists in the workshops used the vocabulary of iconography so that figures and situations could be instantly recognized by the viewer, Harrison said. And they were created to, almost literally, provide a glimpse of paradise.

“These people had almost no color in their lives,” Harrison said. “Dyes and pigments were expensive and precious. They couldn’t read, they couldn’t write. They could walk out of their drab, windowless huts -- out of that drudge and into the glorious cathedral where the paintings are rich with sumptuous colors and touched with gold.”

“They have literally gone from hell to Heaven,” Harrison said. “And lit with candles flickering? These would have almost looked alive.”

Picturing the serene alabaster carvings that are now almost all white encrusted in color and gilt is hard for the modern viewer to imagine.

“It would look maybe even garish to our eyes,” Baldaia said.

The Trinity, God the Father holding up Jesus on the cross, with the Holy Spirit as a dove on top of the cross, is a recurring scene in the alabaster carvings on exhibit at the Huntsville Museum of Art. The carvings, on loan from London's Victoria and Albert Museum, would have been used in the homes of the fairly well-off as a locus for devotional meditation. (Kay Campbell / kcampbell@al.com)

The apparent difference between the flatter Byzantine iconic style of the earlier paintings and the more realistic, rounder style of the early Renaissance works should not be taken as a symbol of artistic skill, Baldaia said, but of what the artist was trying to say with the painting.

“They could do perspective – they just weren’t interested in it,” Baldaia said, pointing to a flattened Mary and Jesus next to a more informal arrangement of the mother and child in what would have been contemporary Renaissance clothing and setting.

In the older works, artists convey the eternal sublimity of the holy figures in their serenity and poise. In the Renaissance settings where the Virgin Mary looks like she could have been a neighbor -- group of caroling angels to one side notwithstanding -- the art expresses the immediacy of the experiences of Jesus and Mary on Earth. God is no longer far away or unearthly, but couched in experiences that mirror those of the onlookers – God truly with them.

The silent conversation of the art works in the controlled-climate gallery rooms, tucked away at the end of the hallway of the museum where the glass sculptures catch the light, becomes a murmur of Christian voices across the ages.

The works weigh the meaning and truths of the incarnation of Jesus and its impact on the humans around him and since him.

The alabaster bas reliefs of many of the same scenes as the paintings offer, literally, a different perspective on the struggles of human beings to emerge from the clay of their understanding into divine illumination.

In these days of Epiphany, the exhibit offers one last echo of the transcendence of Advent and the hope of communion with God.

Exhibit remains through Sunday, Jan. 20, 2013

Admission to "Object of Devotion: Medieval English Alabaster Sculpture from the Victoria & Albert Museum," "Divine Masterpieces: Selections from Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery and “Encounters: John Donovan” is included in regular admission to the museum. The cost is $10 for adults, $8 for students, seniors and members of the military and $5 for children ages 5 to 11. Museum hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday, with extended hours on Thursday until 8 p.m., and Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. Admission is free for members.